Experts express concern over FBI Director James Comey's comments

The FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that his conversations with technology companies had convinced him that encryption is "not a technical issue."Neha Alawadhi | ET Bureau | Updated: December 11, 2015, 09:34 IST

NEW DELHI: Experts have expressed concern over the comments made by Federal Bureau of Investigation's Director, asking technology companies offering end-to-end encryption to consider using techniques that allow interception by law enforcement agencies when necessary.

The FBI DirectorJames Comey on Wednesday said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that his conversations with technology companies had convinced him that encryption is "not a technical issue."

"It is a business model question. Lots of good people have designed their systems and their devices so the judges orders cannot be complied with, for reasons that I understand, I am not questioning their motivation. The question that we have to ask is should they change their business model?" Comey said.

Experts agree that such global discourse affects policy making and provides a reference point for India. "There is no doubt that law enforcement face the challenge in investigations because of strong encryption. If such a system is accepted (I doubt if it ever would be), there would be pressure on Indian manufacturers also as a mutual cooperation," said Na Vijayshankar, a Bengaluru- based cyber law expert.

The Indian government had to withdraw a draft policy on encryption within five days in September because the language of the draft suggested even individuals would have to store all electronic communication in decrypted format for three months. The Minister of Communications and information and Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad had at the time said the draft would be reworked.

"(There is) No immediate implication but global discourse and policies feed into national policy making. India still doesn't have a comprehensive encryption policy on encryption but conflicting sector-specific regulations," said Mishi Choudhary, legal director at the Software Freedom Law Center.

Encryption can be understood as the practice of scrambling data to make it unintelligible for even service providers.

FBI's Comey further called for balancing safety on the Internet with public safety, citing an example of encryption affecting a recent FBI investigation. Media reports however, said it was the local law enforcement department, and not the FBI that prevented the said attacker.

In the wake of National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's revelations about mass surveillance in 2013, there have been several discussions about governments' need to be able to look at citizen data and individual privacy.

"There is rampant confusion about surveillance and mass surveillance. If the government wants to watch and collect data about a location and few suspected people, they must but if they wish to amass all social networking data to be analyzed later, this is not savvy but just brutal," said Choudhary.

As the Paris (attacks) evince, we need targeted surveillance, action on what is collected, and old world policing techniques, she added.

"Surveillance is like salt in cooking," said Sunil Abraham, executive director at Centre of Internet Society. "You need it in essential and tiny quantities. We can maybe "pickle ourselves" or have a higher level of salt, but we cannot make surveillance a 100%," he added.

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Several people ET spoke with about Ericsson’s India operations, including its current and former employees, said the Stockholm-based firm has reduced headcount in the last one year or so across functions, in line with its global restructuring.

Several people ET spoke with about Ericsson’s India operations, including its current and former employees, said the Stockholm-based firm has reduced headcount in the last one year or so across functions, in line with its global restructuring.